The Ghost in the Machine (3 page)

 

 

 

The De-Humanisation of Man

 

 

However, if the futility of these experiments would be the only reason
for criticism, then one would indeed be flogging indignantly a dead
horse. But, incredible as it may seem, the Skinnerians claim that the
bar-pressing experiments with rats, and the training of pigeons (about
which more presently),
provide all the necessary elements to describe,
predict and control human behaviour
-- including language ('verbal
behaviour'), science and art. Skinner's two best-known books are called
The Behaviour of Organisms
and
Science and Human Behaviour
.
Nothing in their resounding titles indicates that the data in them
are almost exclusively derived from conditioning experiments on rats
and pigeons -- and then converted by crude analogies into confident
assertions about the political, religious and ethical problems of man.
The motivational drive of the rat is measured by the number of hours it has
been deprived of food before being put into the box; human behaviour,
according to Skinner, can be described in the same terms:

 

Behaviour which has been strengthened by a conditioned reinforcer
varies with the deprivation appropriate to the primary reinforcer. The
behaviour of going to a restaurant is composed of a sequence of
responses, early members of which (for example, going along a certain
street) are reinforced by the appearance of discriminative stimuli
which control later responses (the appearance of the restaurant,
which we then enter). The whole sequence is ultimately reinforced by
food, and the probability varies with food deprivation. We increase
the chances that someone will go to a restaurant, or even walk along
a particular street, by making him hungry. [7]

 

Next in importance to Skinner of Harvard in shaping academic psychology
was the late Clark Hull of Yale; his pupils still occupy key positions
in the academic world. His system differed on technical points from
Skinner's, but his basic outlook was the same: he, too, expressly
postulated that the differences between the processes of learning in
man and rat are merely of a quantitative, not of a qualitative, order:

 

The natural-science theory of behaviour being developed by the
present author and his associates assumes that all behaviour of the
individuals of a given species and that of all species of mammals,
including man, occurs according to the same set of primary laws. [8]

 

The unique attributes of man, verbal communication and written records,
science, art, and so forth, are considered to differ only in degree,
not in kind, from the learning achievements of the lower animals -- once
more epitomised, for Hull as for Skinner, in the bar-pressing activities
of the rat. Pavlov counted the number of drops which his dogs salivated
through their artificial fistulae, and distilled them into a philosophy
of man; Professors Skinner, Hull and their followers took an equally
heroic short cut from the rat in the box to the human condition.

 

 

Skinner's most impressive experiment in the 'prediction and control
ofbehaviour' is to train pigeons, by operant conditioning, to strut
about with their heads held unnaturally high. He turns on a light; then
food appears in a place where the pigeon can only reach it by stretching
its neck; after a while, each time the light is turned on, the pigeon
stretches its neck, expecting the food. How does one extrapolate from
this to the prediction and control of human behaviour? Skinner explains
(his italics):

 

We describe the contingency by saying that a stimulus (the
light) is the occasion upon which a response (stretching the
neck) is followed by reinforcement (with food). We must specify
all three terms. The effect upon the pigeon is that eventually the
response is more likely to occur when the light is on. The process
through which this comes about is called discrimination. Its
importance in a theoretical analysis, as well as in the practical
control of behaviour, is obvious. . . . For example, in an orchard
in which red apples are sweet and all others sour, the behaviour
of picking and eating comes to be controlled by the redness of
the stimulus. . . . The social environment contains vast numbers
of such contingencies. A smile is an occasion upon which social
approach will meet with approval. A frown is an occasion upon which
the same approach will not meet with approval. Insofar as this is
generally true, approach comes to depend to some extent upon the
facial expression of the person approached. We use this fact when
by smiling or frowning we control to some extent the behaviour of
those approaching us. . . . The verbal stimulus 'Come to dinner'
is an occasion upon which going to a table and sitting down is
usually reinforced by food. The stimulus comes to be effective in
increasing the probability of that behaviour and is produced by the
speaker because it does so. [9]

 

 

How to Manipulate Tautologies

 

 

Skinner did not intend to write a parody.* He means it seriously. Less
obvious, however, than the monumental triviality of its pronouncements is
the fact that the pedantic jargon of Behaviourism is based on ill-defined
verbal concepts which willingly lend themselves to circular arguments
and tautological statements. A 'response', the layman would imagine,
is an answer to a stimulus; but 'operant responses' are 'emitted' to
produc
e a stimulus which occurs
after
the response; the
response 'acts upon the environment in such a way that a reinforcing
stimulus is produced'. [10] In other words, the response responds to a
stimulus which is still in the future -- which, if taken literally, is
nonsensical. An 'operant response' is not in fact a response, but an act
initiated by the animal; but, as organisms are supposed to be controlled
by the environment, the passive term 'response' is mandatory in the
whole literature. Behaviourism is based on S-R theory (stimulus-response
theory) as first defined by Watson: 'The rule or measuring rod, which
the Behaviourist puts in front of him always is: can I describe this bit
of behaviour I see in terms of "stimulus and response"?' [11] These S-R
bits are regarded as the 'elements' or 'atoms' of the chain of behaviour;
if the R for 'response' were eliminated from the terminology, the chain
would fall to pieces, and the whole theory collapse.

 

* In a memorable essay, 'Pavlov and his Bad Dog' (Encounter,
London, Sept. 1964), attacking the English brand of Behaviourism,
Kathleen Nott pointed out three main characteristics of this
kind of jargon: '(1) Grandiose-inflationary or "Bullfrog" (B.f.);
(2) Disguise by obviousness or "Poe" (E.A.P.) and (3) Pejorative
reference to unacceptable concepts or other psychological theories,
or Giving a Name a Bad Dog (B.D.).'

 

Another omnipresent term in contemporary psychological jargon --
which has even found its way into political jargon -- is the ugly word
'reinforcement'. What exactly does it mean? According to Skinner's
'law of conditioning': 'if the occurrence of an operant is followed
by presentation of a
reinforcing stimulus
, the strength
[of that operant] is increased'. [12] And how is a 'reinforcing
stimulus' defined? 'A reinforcing stimulus is defined as such by
its power to produce the resulting change [in strength] .' [13]
Translated into human language, we arrive at the tautology: the
probability of repeating an action is increased by reinforcement, where
'reinforcement' means something which increases that probability.* As one
of Skinner's critics wrote: 'Examining the instances of what Skinner
calls
reinforcement
, we find that not even the requirement
that a reinforcer be an identifiable stimulus is taken seriously'
(Chomsky). [15] According to Skinner, 'a man talks to himself
. . . because of the reinforcement he receives' [16]; thinking is
'behaving which automatically affects the behaviour and is reinforcing
because it does so' [17]; 'just as the musician plays or composes what
he is reinforced by hearing, or as the artist paints what reinforces
him visually, so the speaker engaged in verbal fantasy says what he is
reinforced by hearing or writes what he is reinforced by reading' [18];
and the creative artist is 'controlled entirely by the contingencies of
reinforcement'. [18a] Fortunately, in Skinnerian parlance, the word
'control' is as empty as 'reinforcement'. Originally, in talking of
pigeons and rats, 'prediction and control of behaviour' had a concrete
meaning: by giving and withholding rewards, the animal's behaviour
could be drastically shaped by the experimenter. But in the case of
the writer who is controlled by the 'contingencies of reinforcement',
the word 'control' refers to the fact that his 'verbal behaviour may
reach over centuries or to thousands of listeners or readers at the
same time. The writer may not be reinforced often or immediately, but
his net reinforcement may be great' [19] (which accounts for the great
'strength' of his behaviour, whatever that means). Thus the environment
which 'controls entirely' the writer's verbal behaviour includes stimuli
centuries ahead; and determines whether he should hammer out on his
typewriter a tragedy or a limerick.

 

* The 'strength' of an operant is measured by the probability of it
being repeated in similar conditions. [14]  The tautological nature
of the so-called law of conditioning has been repeatedly pointed
out before.

 

 

This brings us to the Behaviourist's attitude to human creativity. How
can scientific discovery and artistic originality be explained or
described without reference to mind and imagination? The following two
quotations will indicate the answer. The first is again from Watson's
Behaviourism
, published in 1925; the second from Skinner's
Science
and Human Behaviour
, published thirty years later; thus they enable
us to judge whether there is any substantial difference between the
paleo-Behaviourist and neo-Behaviourist attitudes. (Some readers will
perhaps notice that I have already used the same passage from Watson in
The Act of Creation
, for it happens to be the
only
passage in his
fundamental book in which creative activities are discussed):

 

One natural question often raised is, how do we ever get new verbal
creations such as a poem or a brilliant essay? The answer is that
we get them by manipulating words, shifting them about until a new
pattern is hit upon. . . . How do you suppose Patou builds a new
gown? Has he any 'picture in his mind' of what the gown is to look
like when it is finished? He has not. . . . He calls his model in,
picks up a new piece of silk, throws it around her, he pulls it
in here, he pulls it out there. . . . He manipulates the material
until it takes on the semblance of a dress. . . . Not until the
new creation aroused admiration and commendation, both his own and
others, would manipulation be complete -- the equivalent of the rat's
finding food. . . . The painter plies his trade in the same way,
nor can the poet boast of any other method. [19a]

 

In the article on 'Behaviourism' in the 1955 edition of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
you will find five columns of eulogy for
Watson. His books, we are told, 'demomtrate the possibility of writing
an adequate, comprehensive account of human and animal behaviour without
the use of the philosophical concept of mind or consciousness'. One
wonders whether the author of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
article (Professor Hunter of Brown College) would really regard the above
quotation as 'an adequate and comprehensive account' of how Hamlet or
the Sistine Chapel came into being.

 

 

Thirty years after Watson, Skinner summed up the Behaviourist's views
on how original discoveries are made in
Science and Human Behaviour
:
'The result of solving a problem is the appearance of a solution in the
form of a response. . . . The relation between the preliminary behaviour
and the appearance of the solution is simply the relation between the
manipulation of variables and the emission of a response. . . . The
appearance of the response in the individual's behaviour is no more
surprising than the appearance of any response in the behaviour of any
organism. The question of originality can be disposed of. . . .' [20]

 

 

Needless to say, the 'organisms' referred to are once more his rats and
pigeons. Compared with Watson's, the language of the Skinnerians has
become more dehydrated and esoteric. Watson talks of manipulating words
until a new pattern is 'hit upon', Skinner of manipulating 'variables'
until 'a response is emitted'. Both are engaged in question-begging on
a heroic scale, apparently driven by an almost fanatical urge to deny,
at all costs, the existence of properties which account for the humanity
of man and the rattiness of the rat.

 

 

 

The Philosophy of Ratomorphism

 

 

Behaviourism started as a kind of puritan revolt against the excessive use
of introspectionist methods in some older schools of psychology which held
-- in James's definition -- that the business of the psychologist was 'the
description and explanation of states of consciousness'. Consciousness,
Watson objected, is 'neither a definable nor a usable concept, it is
merely another word for the "soul" of more ancient times. . . . No one has
ever touched a soul or seen one in a test-tube. Consciousness is just as
unprovable, as unapproachable as the old concept of the soul. . . . The
Behaviourists reached the conclusion that they could no longer be content
to work with intangibles and unapproachables. They decided either to
give up psychology or else to make it a natural science. . . . ' [21]